#(blue.)

the story begins on the fourth of july. while the rest of the town gathers to watch the local fireworks display, a nineteen year old birdie is alone in a hospital room giving birth to blue. ray is passed out in someone’s back garden, phone on silent after a long day of partying with his friends. birdie had been excited to become a mother. she’d talked about it for most of her life, convinced it might heal her, give her purpose. it didn’t. she never bonded with her son. when he cried, she covered her ears, hating the sound, wishing him gone. after six weeks, she packed a bag and left a note for ray that simply read : you’ll figure it out. only he never really did. ray drank and drifted from scheme to scheme, the kind that always ended badly. blue knows his father tried . . . sometimes, in his own way. loved his kids in the only way he knew how. he never sat down and helped them with their homework, never showed up to parent teacher meetings — in fact, he was barley home at all. but if someone dared wrong his kids ? well, he was the first to show up, swinging a baseball bat and making threats. blue always one step behind. birdie came back in waves over the years, bringing impersonal gifts and stories that felt greatly exaggerated. despite everything, she and ray had three more children. each time, birdie promised it would be different. and each time, she really believed it. hell, the first time even ray let himself be hopeful. but blue never did. in the end, he was the one who picked up their slack. what began as being late to school to make sure the rest of them got there, soon became dropping out. taking jobs that paid under the table in order to provide what ray wasn't. birdie missed every important moment. sadly ray missed most of them too, except for the rare occasions he showed up with some half-baked plan he always roped blue into. those moments were the closest they ever came to feeling like a real father and son. partners in crime . . . literally. earning them a reputation of a family you should avoid. when blue was eighteen, his grandfather died and left behind a dive bar called the taproom. ray inherited it, but the responsibility fell onto blue much like everything else. he wasn’t old enough to drink, let alone run a bar . . . but he did it anyway. years later, in a funny twist of fate, blue won the bar off ray in a poker game. not long after, ray went to prison on fraud charges. blue tries to believe he’s nothing like his parents, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. he keeps the taproom mostly legit while running hustles on the side — fake ids, bootleg wristbands, back-room tattoos, forged permits. whatever you need, he knows a guy. because he is the guy. when things go wrong, he smiles his way out of it. a methods that works more often than it should. he’s been trouble most of his life — a little too easy to fall into the category that people put you in. he's quick with a joke, even quicker on his feet. but he's loyal to a fault. despite everything, he owns a free ray t-shirt that he wears unironically. he even has them on sale at the bar, hoping to raise some funds for his fathers next hearing. ray might not contribute a lot to family life, but he's the the only parent that stuck around. to blue, that at least means something. in more recent years, he's been a lot more careful, making the bar a priority. through doing so he's been able to keep his siblings with him, raising them in a way he hopes will provide them with a better chance than he had. while nyla is too old now, he's doing all that he can to gain official custody of the younger two. renz calls him blue, but views him as a father figure, while zia knows nothing but him, viewing him fully as her only parent.